She Has No Regrets
by Doormouse
Summary: A drabble in the Pomegranates universe for and FOREVER, and a new challenge for all you authors or aspiring authors who just needed a nudge!


**It's not quite the epilogue that I promised, but it's one of maybe a few drabbles involving our grim couple. **

**This one is dedicated to and FOREVER who was the magic reviewer who first broke my all time record of most reviews. Yay! **

** We've also come up with the idea of a little challenge. If you're interested the rules lay at the end of this silly little drabble.**

**With little sections of the Hades/Persephone myth garnered from other places. And you all know very well I don't own the myths. Duh. And Cartoon Network owns Grim and Mandy, they just don't know what to do with them. **

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_Upon his entry to the Underworld, the messenger Hermes was amazed at what he found. Instead of finding a frail and fearful Persephone, he found a radiant and striking Queen of the Dead. She had adjusted well to her new position, saying she had even found her calling. The Goddess was now in charge of greeting the new arrivals and helping them adapt to their new life. While she wished to see her mother up above, she was torn by her desire to remain Hades' wife. _

There weren't words really to describe the queen of the Underworld. She was mortal once, and that might have had something to do with it people supposed. Still it was strange that she could control such power in her small body. That was the trick. She had gotten very good at subtly since she had ascended to the throne and people who had not seen her that day she had become a God did not know. They did not know that she was not_ just_ a Goddess, and she was not _just_ a Queen. She had a power that was all her own.

It hadn't a true name, and it wasn't something anyone had much understanding of, but it was there and they knew it. Stranger still she had not been a Goddess when the world was new, she was just a mortal girl, raised in the mortal world and aging and dying with all of the others. Whispers abounded and the story had changed and grown. Suddenly she had the power to steal the power of other beings, as she had stolen it from Nyx that day long ago.

She was like a vampire and she would come for you and your power in the night if you crossed her.

But she wasn't power-hungry, you couldn't call her that when you discussed her marriage to the king at least. You couldn't call it a political marriage but if she heard the whispers of love and passion, she'd prove she was the Goddess of Shadows and Night and she would prove that she had all the dark cruelty that position required.

It was a love-match though.

Grim was startled most of all by this fact, and Mandy might have been surprised as well, not that she would admit that to just anyone. She did love him though, she'd said it once and she'd married him certain enough. She wouldn't have done that just for the power, and she wouldn't have done that if she didn't want to.

She wanted to and that startled him and that made him smile. They had gone back once, to the world that they'd lived in for so long, but they both felt unwelcome and displaced.

No one was invited to the wedding, it was him and her and a zombie-preacher whose jaw kept coming unhinged when he spoke. Grim knew people whispered, and wondered how he and she could have a love-match, but he wasn't certain himself. He loved her and she loved him and he had faith in her and her love, but he wasn't certain how it worked between them.

They fought often, but there was a different tone to their fights when they were just silly little arguments for the sake of arguing. They both enjoyed the competition to an extent. Just the same they fought for real sometimes. They would start innocently enough and then he would refuse to bend and she would refuse to bend and they'd get frustrated, their meager patiences run thin.

Finally she would shout something that reminded him of ten years of servitude and it would make him feel like she didn't love him in the slightest, he was just the old Bonehead who would do whatever she said without question and no one listened to him anyway. He'd be hurt, and when he was hurt he was vindictive and he did have the powers of the Underworld at the tip of his hand. He'd call her heartless usually, and a tree stump too.

She would turn, tilt up her chin ever so slightly in that way he knew so well, and with the power that wasn't the darkness and the power that wasn't hers as queen; instead with the power that was all her own she would turn on her heel and storm off, growling while Grim stormed off in the other direction, grumbling under his breath.

Completely by accident they would eventually make the mistake of stumbling one upon the other. Over a meal or in the halls maybe. Once or twice they even waited until they were settling down for bed and stumbled upon each other in the bedroom they shared.

It was always her who took the lead, and she wouldn't smile, not really.

She didn't _ever_ smile.

Her brow would smooth out, and her edges would soften and she'd sheath her claws. She wasn't apologizing, she was offering a fresh start, _let us put this behind us and forget what's happened. It is to be expected. _

Then, slow at first he _would_ smile, a real smile if one that lacked lips, and he'd take her hand and she'd brush fleshy fingers over bone and then she'd pick a book from the shelf of their little private library and read aloud from it for a while.

_For Persephone there is no remorse. She looks forward to the time she spends as Hades' Queen and wife._

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**okay, now that you've all enjoyed that (hopefully) please take the time to work out at least a drabble with the following rules of the and FOREVER and Doormouse Encroaching Doom Syndrome Challenge.**

**Which is exactly what it sounds like. **

**Sorry all you Billy X Mandy Fans but this is geared toward Grim/Mandy, though I gotta admit it could be for any couple and any genre.**

**There aren't too many rules, just the following:**

**1) It can be any genre, any couple, anything. Write something you know well, or try something you've never done before.**

**2) Grim must catch the Encroaching Doom, or already have it, or maybe his old case flairs up again, but he has to have it.**

**3) You can make him turn human again or you can explore the illness more just BE CREATIVE**

**4) post it here and have fun, we want to be able to squeal wildly over your work. **


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